[This translation by Ian Johnston of Vancouver Island
University, Nanaimo, BC, has certain copyright restrictions. For information
please consult the following link: Table of
Contents. For comments or question please contact Ian
Johnston. For links to more Kafka e-texts in English
click here. This text was last revised on June 11, 2015.]

A HUNGER ARTIST

In the last decades interest in hunger artists has
declined considerably. Whereas in earlier days there was good money to be earned
putting on major productions of this sort under one’s own management, nowadays
that is totally impossible. Those were different times. Back then the hunger
artist captured the attention of the entire city. From day to day while the
fasting lasted, participation increased. Everyone wanted to see the hunger
artist at least once a day. During the later days there were people with
subscription tickets who sat all day in front of the small barred cage. And
there were even viewing hours at night, their impact heightened by torchlight.
On fine days the cage was dragged out into the open air, and then the hunger
artist was put on display particularly for the children. While for grown-ups the
hunger artist was often merely a joke, something they participated in because it
was fashionable, the children looked on amazed, their mouths open, holding each
other’s hands for safety, as he sat there on scattered straw—spurning a chair—in
black tights, looking pale, with his ribs sticking out prominently, sometimes
nodding politely, answering questions with a forced smile, even sticking his arm
out through the bars to let people feel how emaciated he was, but then
completely sinking back into himself, so that he paid no attention to anything,
not even to what was so important to him, the striking of the clock, which was
the single furnishing in the cage, but merely looking out in front of him with
his eyes almost shut and now and then sipping from a tiny glass of water to
moisten his lips.

Apart from the changing groups of spectators there were
also constant observers chosen by the public—strangely enough they were usually
butchers—who, always three at a time, were given the task of observing the
hunger artist day and night, so that he didn’t get anything to eat in some
secret manner. It was, however, merely a formality, introduced to reassure the
masses, for those who understood knew well enough that during the period of
fasting the hunger artist would never, under any circumstances, have eaten the
slightest thing, not even if compelled by force. The honor of his art forbade
it. Naturally, none of the watchers understood that. Sometimes there were
nightly groups of watchers who carried out their vigil very laxly, deliberately
sitting together in a distant corner and putting all their attention into
playing cards there, clearly intending to allow the hunger artist a small
refreshment, which, according to their way of thinking, he could get from some
secret supplies. Nothing was more excruciating to the hunger artist than such
watchers. They depressed him. They made his fasting terribly difficult.
Sometimes he overcame his weakness and sang during the time they were observing,
for as long as he could keep it up, to show people how unjust their suspicions
about him were. But that was little help. For then they just wondered among
themselves about his skill at being able to eat even while singing. He much
preferred the observers who sat down right against the bars and, not satisfied
with the dim backlighting of the room, illuminated him with electric
flashlights, which the impresario made available to them. The glaring light
didn’t bother him in the slightest. Generally he couldn’t sleep at all, and he
could always doze off a little under any lighting and at any hour, even in an
overcrowded, noisy auditorium. With such observers, he was very happily prepared
to spend the entire night without sleeping. He was ready to joke with them, to
recount stories from his nomadic life and then, in turn, to listen to their
stories—doing everything just to keep them awake, so that he could keep showing
them once again that he had nothing to eat in his cage and that he was fasting
as none of them could. He was happiest, however, when morning came and a lavish
breakfast was brought for them at his own expense, on which they hurled
themselves with the appetite of healthy men after a hard night’s work without
sleep. True, there were still people who wanted to see in this breakfast an
unfair means of influencing the observers, but that was going too far, and if
they were asked whether they wanted to undertake the observers’ night shift for
its own sake, without the breakfast, they excused themselves. But nonetheless
they stood by their suspicions.

However, it was, in general, part of fasting that these
doubts were inextricably associated with it. For, in fact, no one was in a
position to spend time watching the hunger artist every day and night without
interruption, so no one could know, on the basis of his own observation, whether
this was a case of truly continuous, flawless fasting. The hunger artist himself
was the only one who could know that and, at the same time, the only spectator
capable of being completely satisfied with his own fasting. But the reason he
was never satisfied was something different. Perhaps it was not fasting at all
which made him so very emaciated that many people, to their own regret, had to
stay away from his performance, because they couldn’t bear to look at him. For
he was also so skeletal out of dissatisfaction with himself, because he alone
knew something that even initiates didn’t know—how easy it was to fast. It was
the easiest thing in the world. About this he did not remain silent, but people
did not believe him. At best they thought he was being modest. Most of them,
however, believed he was a publicity seeker or a total swindler, for whom, at
all events, fasting was easy, because he understood how to make it easy, and
then still had the nerve to half admit it. He had to accept all that. Over the
years he had become accustomed to it. But this dissatisfaction kept gnawing at
his insides all the time and never yet—and this one had to say to his credit—had
he left the cage of his own free will after any period of fasting. The
impresario had set the maximum length of time for the fast at forty days—he
would never allow the fasting go on beyond that point, not even in the
cosmopolitan cities. And, in fact, he had a good reason. Experience had shown
that for about forty days one could increasingly whip up a city’s interest by
gradually increasing advertising, but that then the public turned away—one could
demonstrate a significant decline in popularity. In this respect, there were, of
course, small differences among different towns and among different countries,
but as a rule it was true that forty days was the maximum length of time. So
then on the fortieth day the door of the cage—which was covered with flowers—was
opened, an enthusiastic audience filled the amphitheater, a military band
played, two doctors entered the cage in order to take the necessary measurements
of the hunger artist, the results were announced to the auditorium through a
megaphone, and finally two young ladies arrived, happy to have just been
selected by lot, and sought to lead the hunger artist down a couple of steps out
of the cage, where on a small table a carefully chosen hospital meal was laid
out. And at this moment the hunger artist always fought back. Of course, he
still freely laid his bony arms in the helpful outstretched hands of the ladies
bending over him, but he did not want to stand up. Why stop right now after
forty days? He could have kept going for even longer, for an unlimited length of
time. Why stop right now, when he was in his best form, indeed, not yet even in
his best fasting form? Why did people want to rob him of the fame of fasting
longer, not just so that he could become the greatest hunger artist of all time,
which, in fact, he probably was already, but also so that he could surpass
himself in some unimaginable way, for he felt there were no limits to his
capacity for fasting. Why did this crowd, which pretended to admire him so much,
have so little patience with him? If he kept going and kept fasting even longer,
why would they not tolerate it? Then, too, he was tired and felt good sitting in
the straw. Now he was supposed to stand up straight and tall and go to eat,
something which, when he merely imagined it, made him feel nauseous right away.
With great difficulty he repressed mentioning this only out of consideration for
the women. And he looked up into the eyes of these women, apparently so friendly
but in reality so cruel, and shook his excessively heavy head on his feeble
neck. But then happened what always happened. The impresario came forward
without a word—the music made talking impossible—raised his arms over the hunger
artist, as if inviting heaven to look upon its work here on the straw, this
unfortunate martyr (something the hunger artist certainly was, only in a
completely different sense), grabbed the hunger artist around his thin waist, in
the process wanting with his exaggerated caution to make people believe that
here he had to deal with something fragile, and handed him over—not without
secretly shaking him a little, so that the hunger artist’s legs and upper body
swung back and forth uncontrollably—to the women, who had in the meantime turned
as pale as death. At this point, the hunger artist endured everything. His head
lay on his chest—it was as if it had inexplicably rolled around and just stopped
there—his body was arched back, his legs, in an impulse of self-preservation,
pressed themselves together at the knees, but scraped the ground, as if they
were not really on the floor but were looking for the real ground, and the
entire weight of his body, admittedly very small, lay against one of the women,
who appealed for help with flustered breath, for she had not imagined her post
of honor would be like this, and then stretched her neck as far as possible, to
keep her face from the least contact with the hunger artist, but then, when she
couldn’t manage this and her more fortunate companion didn’t come to her
assistance but trembled and remained content to hold in front of her the hunger
artist’s hand, that small bundle of knuckles, she broke into tears, to the
delighted laughter of the auditorium, and had to be relieved by an attendant who
had been standing ready for some time. Then came the meal. The impresario put a
little food into the mouth of the hunger artist, now dozing as if he were
fainting, and kept up a cheerful patter designed to divert attention away from
the hunger artist’s condition. Then a toast was proposed to the public, which
was supposedly whispered to the impresario by the hunger artist, the orchestra
confirmed everything with a great fanfare, people dispersed, and no one had the
right to be dissatisfied with the event, no one except the hunger artist—he was
always the only one.

He lived this way, taking small regular breaks, for many
years, apparently in the spotlight, honored by the world, but for all that, his
mood was usually gloomy, and it kept growing gloomier all the time, because no
one understood how to take it seriously. But how was he to find consolation?
What was there left for him to wish for? And if a good-natured man who felt
sorry for him ever wanted to explain to him that his sadness probably came from
his fasting, then it could happen, especially at an advanced stage of the
fasting, that the hunger artist responded with an outburst of rage and began to
shake the cage like an animal, frightening everyone. But the impresario had a
way of punishing moments like this, something he was happy to use. He would make
an apology for the hunger artist to the assembled public, conceding that the
irritability had been provoked only by his fasting, which well-fed people did
not readily understand and which was capable of excusing the behavior of the
hunger artist. From there he would move on to speak about the equally
hard-to-understand claim of the hunger artist that he could go on fasting for
much longer than he was doing. He would praise the lofty striving, the good
will, and the great self-denial no doubt contained in this claim, but then would
try to contradict it simply by producing photographs, which were also on sale,
for in the pictures one could see the hunger artist on the fortieth day of his
fast, in bed, almost dead from exhaustion. Although the hunger artist was very
familiar with this perversion of the truth, it strained his nerves every time
and was too much for him. What was a result of the premature ending of the fast
people were now proposing as its cause! It was impossible to fight against this
lack of understanding, against this world of misunderstanding. In good faith he
still always listened eagerly to the impresario at the bars of his cage, but
each time, once the photographs came out, he would let go of the bars and, with
a sigh, sink back into the straw, and a reassured public could come up again and
view him.

When those who had witnessed such scenes thought back on
them a few years later, often they were unable to understand themselves. For in
the meantime that change mentioned above had set in. It happened almost
immediately. There may have been more profound reasons for it, but who bothered
to discover what they were? At any rate, one day the pampered hunger artist saw
himself abandoned by the crowd of pleasure seekers, who preferred to stream to
other attractions. The impresario chased around half of Europe one more time
with him, to see whether he could rediscover the old interest here and there. It
was all futile. It was as if a secret agreement against the fasting performances
had really developed everywhere. Naturally, the truth is that it could not have
happened so quickly, and people later remembered some things which in the days
of intoxicating success they had not paid sufficient attention to, some
inadequately suppressed indications, but now it was too late to do anything to
counter them. Of course, it was certain that the popularity of fasting would
return once more someday, but for those now alive that was no consolation. What
was the hunger artist to do now? The man whom thousands of people had cheered on
could not display himself in show booths at small fun fairs, and the hunger
artist was not only too old to take up a different profession, but was
fanatically devoted to fasting more than anything else. So he said farewell to
the impresario, an incomparable companion on his life’s road, and let himself be
hired by a large circus. In order to spare his own sensitive feelings, he didn’t
even look at the terms of his contract.

A large circus with its huge number of men, animals, and
gimmicks, which are constantly being let go and replenished, can use anyone at
any time, even a hunger artist, provided, of course, his demands are modest.
Moreover, in this particular case it was not only the hunger artist himself who
was engaged, but also his old and famous name. In fact, given the characteristic
nature of his art, which was not diminished by his advancing age, one could
never claim that a worn-out artist, who no longer stood at the pinnacle of his
ability, wanted to escape to a quiet position in the circus. On the contrary,
the hunger artist declared that he could fast just as well as in earlier times—a
claim that was entirely credible. Indeed, he even affirmed that if people would
let him do what he wanted—and he was promised this without further ado—he would
really now legitimately amaze the world for the first time, an assertion which,
however, given the mood of the time, something the hunger artist in his
enthusiasm easily overlooked, only brought smiles from the experts.

In essence, however, the hunger artist had also not
forgotten his sense of the way things really were, and he took it as
self-evident that people would not set him and his cage up as some star
attraction in the middle of the arena, but would move him outside in some other
readily accessible spot near the animal stalls. Huge brightly painted signs
surrounded the cage and announced what there was to look at there. During the
intervals in the main performance, when the general public pushed out towards
the menagerie in order to see the animals, they could hardly avoid moving past
the hunger artist and stopping there a moment. They would perhaps have remained
with him longer, if those pushing up behind them in the narrow passageway, who
did not understand this pause on the way to the animal stalls they wanted to
see, had not made a longer peaceful observation impossible. This was also the
reason why the hunger artist began to tremble before these visiting hours, which
he naturally used to long for as the main purpose of his life. In the early days
he could hardly wait for the pauses in the performances. He had looked forward
with delight to the crowd pouring around him, until he became convinced only too
quickly—and even the most stubborn, almost deliberate self-deception could not
hold out against the experience—that, judging by their intentions, most of these
people were, time and again without exception, only visiting the menagerie. And
this view from a distance still remained his most beautiful moment. For when
they had come right up to him, he immediately got an earful from the shouting
and cursing of the two steadily increasing groups, the ones who wanted to take
their time looking at the hunger artist, not with any understanding but on a
whim or from mere defiance—for him these ones were soon the more painful—and a
second group of people whose only demand was to go straight to the animal
stalls. Once the large crowds had passed, the late-comers would arrive, and
although there was no longer anything preventing these people from sticking
around for as long as they wanted, they rushed past with long strides, almost
without a sideways glance, to get to the animals in time. And it was an
all-too-rare stroke of luck when the father of a family came by with his
children, pointed his finger at the hunger artist, gave a detailed explanation
about what was going on here, and talked of earlier years, when he had been
present at similar but incomparably more magnificent performances, and then the
children, because they had been inadequately prepared at school and in life,
always stood around still uncomprehendingly. What was fasting to them? But
nonetheless the brightness of the look in their searching eyes revealed
something of new and more gracious times coming. Perhaps, the hunger artist said
to himself sometimes, everything would be a little better if his location were
not quite so near the animal stalls. That way it would be easy for people to
make their choice, to say nothing of the fact that he was very upset and
constantly depressed by the stink from the stalls, the animals’ commotion at
night, the pieces of raw meat dragged past him for the carnivorous beasts, and
the roars at feeding time. But he did not dare to approach the administration
about it. In any case, he had the animals to thank for the crowds of visitors
among whom, now and then, there could also be one destined for him. And who knew
where they would hide him if he wished to remind them of his existence and,
along with that, of the fact that, strictly speaking, he was only an obstacle on
the way to the menagerie.

A small obstacle, at any rate, a constantly diminishing
obstacle. People became accustomed to thinking it strange that in these times
they would want to pay attention to a hunger artist, and with this habitual
awareness the judgment on him was pronounced. He might fast as well as he
could—and he did—but nothing could save him anymore. People went straight past
him. Try to explain the art of fasting to anyone! If someone doesn’t feel it,
then he cannot be made to understand it. The beautiful signs became dirty and
illegible. People tore them down, and no one thought of replacing them. The
small table with the number of days the fasting had lasted, which early on had
been carefully renewed every day, remained unchanged for a long time, for after
the first weeks the staff grew tired of even this small task. And so the hunger
artist kept fasting on and on, as he once had dreamed about in earlier times,
and he had no difficulty at all managing to achieve what he had predicted back
then, but no one was counting the days—no one, not even the hunger artist
himself, knew how great his achievement was by this point, and his heart grew
heavy. And when once in a while a person strolling past stood there making fun
of the old number and talking of a swindle, that was in a sense the stupidest
lie which indifference and innate maliciousness could invent, for the hunger
artist was not being deceptive—he was working honestly—but the world was
cheating him of his reward.

Many days went by once more, and this, too, came to an
end. Finally the cage caught the attention of a supervisor, and he asked the
attendant why they had left this perfectly useful cage standing here unused with
rotting straw inside. Nobody knew, until one man, with the help of the table
with the number on it, remembered the hunger artist. They pushed the straw
around with poles and found the hunger artist in there. “Are you still fasting?”
the supervisor asked. “When are you finally going to stop?” “Forgive me
everything,” whispered the hunger artist. Only the supervisor, who was pressing
his ear up against the cage, understood him. “Certainly,” said the supervisor,
tapping his forehead with his finger in order to indicate to the staff the state
the hunger artist was in, “we forgive you.” “I always wanted you to admire my
fasting,” said the hunger artist. “But we do admire it,” said the supervisor
obligingly. “But you shouldn’t admire it,” said the hunger artist. “Well then,
we don’t admire it,” said the supervisor, “but why shouldn’t we admire it?”
“Because I have to fast. I can’t do anything else,” said the hunger artist.
“Just look at you,” said the supervisor, “why can’t you do anything else?”
“Because,” said the hunger artist, lifting his head a little and, with his lips
pursed as if for a kiss, speaking right into the supervisor’s ear so that he
wouldn’t miss anything, “because I couldn’t find a food that tasted good to me.
If had found that, believe me, I would not have made a spectacle of myself and
would have eaten to my heart’s content, like you and everyone else.” Those were
his last words, but in his failing eyes there was still the firm, if no longer
proud, conviction that he was continuing to fast.

“All right, tidy this up now,” said the supervisor. And
they buried the hunger artist along with the straw. But in his cage they put a
young panther. Even for a person with the dullest mind it was clearly refreshing
to see this wild animal prowling around in this cage, which had been dreary for
such a long time. It lacked nothing. Without having to think much about it, the
guards brought the animal food whose taste it enjoyed. It never seemed once to
miss its freedom. This noble body, equipped with everything necessary, almost to
the point of bursting, even appeared to carry freedom around with it. That
seemed to be located somewhere or other in its teeth, and its joy in living came
with such strong passion from its throat that it was not easy for spectators to
keep watching. But they controlled themselves, kept pressing around the cage,
and had no desire at all to move on.